"...I notice a bunch of flowers leaned up against the gatepost next door. It's held together at the bottom by wrinkled silver foil and looks assembled from two petrol station bouquets. I recognize the supermarket livery. It's Zalie's first bouquet...
...Tributes, they're called. Shrines. When did they start? Or did they always exist? I can't remember. I don't think so."
I don't normally read much detective fiction because, just like Crimewatch, it tends to give me nightmares. When I found this book on Amazon though I was intrigued by the blurb and decided to give it a try. It's about a detective investigating the murder of a young woman, Zalie Dyer. Her neighbour is the prime suspect and because he is regarded as being eccentric - a man who prefers the company of the Arts to the company of people - he is quickly judged by the Press to be guilty in a mad frenzy of trial by media - or 'media monstering' as the book calls it.
The story-line is strong throughout and I felt immediately engaged with the characters. The detective duo is an unlikely pairing - Ander has been privately educated, while Gary was brought up on a council estate. This effectively means that we get two completely different perspectives on the unfolding evidence, along with some witty repartee and joshing between the two men as they seek to find the evidence that will lead to the prosecution of Zalie's murderer.
Ander however, is much closer to the investigation than his partner is aware of because the suspect is actually Ander's old teacher from the private school he attended as a boy; a school where bullying and abuse was rife. It was an unhappy time in his life, one that he has deeply suppressed. As the investigation unfolds and they begin to close the net around Zalie's killer, Ander must first excavate his own past in order to come to terms with it. He begins by interviewing his old teacher for the crime of murder.
The theme of systematic abuse within the sphere of private education is far from new, but Throw Me To The Wolves is much more than a novel of gratuitous violence against young boys. As a Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, the author Patrick McGuiness is no stranger to the world of highly privileged education and the often isolating bubble in which the students live. His professional experience of working in the highest echelons of British education at Oxford gives the novel a rich tapestry of colour, as McGuiness imagines what it would be like to be trapped within an abusive school, where the tutors are omnipotent and from which there is no escape.
It's a very dramatic novel. The story is strong, not least because it has echoes of a similar case the media were covering some years ago and as I read the book, I found myself picturing those same faces from the news reels of the past. The parallels between a well documented historical case and the fictional case of Throw Me To The Wolves does make for uncomfortable reading at times, but it also keeps you on the edge of your seat as you wait for Ander and Gary to solve the case and bring the perpetrator to justice.
Occasionally the voice of the narrator seems to go off on a tangent, but this is consistent with his character. He is a deep thinker. He ponders a lot and he observes his surroundings in quiet contemplation, weighing things up in his mind as a good detective should. Yet, even his tangents are interesting and read more like a social commentary. He wonders when death forgot its place and wandered out onto the street in the form of 'floral tributes'; he empathizes with women who are being sexually harassed on a daily basis and who feel powerless to stop it; he befriend's an old lady who can't makes ends meet due to the poverty austerity has plunged her into. In the course of his investigation he questions the purpose of social media as he scrolls through the victim's Twitter and Face book accounts saying;
"Her Twitter account is still there, and hundred's of people have already DM'd her to tell her how sorry they are that she's dead. On her Facebook page, the condolences are mounting up. They're addressed to her, as if she were checking her social media on the other side. Is that what they think she's doing?"
Ander and Gary are in a race against the local journalists to get the murder solved as soon as possible, but their job is made more difficult by the media frenzy surrounding the case. The journalist Lynne Forester is a grown up, more poisonous version of Rita Skeeta from the Harry Potter books. Everything Lynne writes is twisted and sensationalized. She isn't interested in the truth, she's just looking for a story, which isn't the same thing at all and she doesn't care how many lives she ruins in the process of her skewed journalism.
Throw Me To The Wolves is a beautifully written, thought-provoking novel. It highlights the cliches used by the British media in order to influence their consumers to think a certain way. It condemns the political policies that leave people struggling to pay for their weekly groceries. It holds up a mirror and makes the reader question their own motives for buying newspapers and watching news bulletins. After all, if there was no audience there would be no such thing as a media monstering. But it is also a highly entertaining novel and I am looking forward to reading more books by this author in the future.
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